Who and all were those people, and what were charges raised

Ahmad Abouammo, from the United States, was also convicted by a jury of conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. He worked on media partnerships in the Middle East at the company from 2014 to 2015. According to the sources, he and another Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, were approached by the Saudi government and offered cash and luxury goods for their cooperation in collecting personal information on Twitter users of interest.

Ali Alzabarah, an engineer at the company, fled to Saudi Arabia and evaded trial. In light of his connection to the Saudi government, Twitter warned some users that their accounts had been targeted by state-sponsored actors in 2015.

What were the prosecutor's arguments?

In the trial, the prosecutor argued that a prominent member of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s government tapped Ahmad Abouammo for help investigating his enemies.

During that cooperation, Ahmad Abouammo allegedly collected personal information, including birth dates, email addresses, and phone numbers of the Saudi government's critics, and sent that data to his contacts there. Ahmad Abouammo’s defense maintained that he only accessed the information as part of his regular work duties at Twitter.

Further examples led by the prosecutor

In 2018, Saudi government agents murdered and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, Virginia resident, and frequent critic of the regime. Despite the evidence that the crown prince ordered the killing to silence a political enemy, the U.S. maintains a cordial relationship with the Saudi government.

Denial against the prosecutor

According to sources, the prosecutor was not allowed to instruct the jury directly about the brutal punishment Saudi Arabia doles out to its critics. Still, they could gesture toward that reputation through witnesses, including a woman who described how her brother disappeared in 2018 after criticizing the country on Twitter.

Hence Ahmad Abouammo was arrested in Seattle, Washington, in November 2019 and sentenced to twenty years, while Ali Alzabarah was believed to be in Saudi Arabia.